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The Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS.edu) is the largest public policy Ph.D. program in the nation and the only program based at an independent public policy research organization—the RAND Corporation.

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RAND's research on pre-K, K-12, and higher education covers issues such as assessment and accountability, choice-based and standards-based school reform, vocational training, and the value of arts education and policy in sustaining communities and promoting a well-rounded community.

While educators, policymakers, and parents may agree on the need for more effective teachers, they often use different criteria to judge whether schools are doing their job. Parents have varied priorities for what they want in teachers and in schools.

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This paper studies the effects of guaranteed college admission on student effort and achievement. In 1997, Texas enacted the "Top Ten Percent" law, which guarantees admission to any public college for students in the top ten percent of their high school class.

This final comprehensive report highlights key findings from the half-term report and presents additional results related to the implementation of the system, quality improvement (QI) supports provided through the system, program quality and children's developmental outcomes, and perceptions of quality and the rating system.

Assess the value of preschool education programs and compare their upfront costs with the economic benefits they produce, measured by outcomes such as less need for special education services, improved high school graduation rates, and activity in adulthood.

The lack of an evidence base on teaching quality and its impact in higher education points to a need for more research, made more pressing by the imminent roll-out of the Teaching Excellence Framework, which intends to assess and monitor teaching quality at UK higher education institutions.

RAND Europe conducted a literature of research published since 2012, with the aim of identifying and summarising the key trends and issues in the literature on how 'quality teaching' and its impact are currently being defined and demonstrated at higher education institutions.

Uninsured individuals who knew more about health insurance and finance were more likely to gain coverage under the ACA. Policies and programs aiming to reduce the numbers of uninsured should consider the financial literacy and health insurance knowledge of the groups they are trying to reach.

A literature review will examine existing research in the area of defining and demonstrating teaching quality and impact. This review will help practitioners, policy makers and researchers to focus more effectively on relevant questions, issues or sources of evidence to inform their own research or practice.

Based on findings from an evaluation of Delaware's quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for early care and education programs, RAND provided recommendations for state decisionmakers, including considering further refinements to the rating structure, strengthening quality improvement supports, and enhancing administrative data systems.

Educational policymakers and researchers are concerned about the declining quantity and quality of U.S. students in line to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The Kyra School Alliance seeks to maximise the impact of teachers’ feedback on pupils’ outcome through the use of video. RAND Europe is conducting an efficiency trial of this intervention along with a process evaluation to understand how the intervention improves pupil outcomes.

Researcher Spotlight

Social Research Analyst

Abby Robyn is a social research analyst at the RAND Corporation. Her research focuses on the implementation of educational innovations. She has extensive experience in collecting, analyzing, and reporting on qualitative data, including coordinating case studies, developing interview protocols,…

Policy Researcher

Louay Constant is a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. While at RAND, he has worked on a number of projects that have examined the link between national skills demand and supply, K-12 education reform, postsecondary education and…

The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.